The Washington Commanders are coming to HBO, alongside their NFC East rivals.
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said at Wednesday’s league meetings that the division would be featured in the 2025 installment of “Hard Knocks: In Season.”
This year’s training camp edition of the show will follow the Buffalo Bills and reigning MVP Josh Allen. The five-part series that airs Tuesdays premieres Aug. 5, HBO officials said. The league reached a new multi-year deal with HBO to continue to broadcast the show, which is in its 25th year.
The popular documentary program, which began following NFL training camps in 2001, has never featured Washington. The initiative expanded with an in-season series in 2021, first with individual teams before tracking entire divisions.
Commanders quarterback Jayden Daniels will be one of the featured stars. He’ll look to avoid a sophomore slump this year after winning the NFL’s Rookie of the Year award and leading the Commanders to the NFC championship game last season.
The in-season program also will feature the defending Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles alongside the Dallas Cowboys — one of the league’s most popular franchises — and the New York Giants, who added quarterback Jaxson Dart in the first round of last month’s NFL draft.
The Giants get a second shot after being featured last season. The season included a crucial must-see scene where general manager Joe Schoen told running back Saquon Barkley that the Giants would not make him a free agent offer, nor stick the franchise tag on the No. 2 pick of the 2018 draft. Rather, the Giants would let Barkley test the free-agent market, a move that sent him to an NFC East rival. It included a pained reaction from Giants owner John Mara about losing the popular player.
Barkley, who signed with the rival Eagles and went on to win the Super Bowl, later complained that his side of the conversation with Schoen was recorded and aired without his consent.
“We are thrilled to provide Hard Knocks fans a summer with the Bills and winter with the Cowboys, Giants, Commanders and Eagles in the first year of our exciting new deal with NFL Films,” Lisa Heller, Nancy Abraham and Bentley Weiner, executives in HBO’s documentaries department, said in a joint statement. “There will be no shortage of star power.”
The NFL revamped its rules last year around “Hard Knocks” appearances, previously allowing teams that made the playoffs within the previous two seasons to decline to participate. Such an opt-out is no longer an option. Teams now ineligible for selection include those with a first-year head coach, those that have appeared on the training camp version of the show in the past eight seasons, and those picked for the in-season version focusing on one division.
The Chicago Bears were a first-time “Hard Knocks” participant last season during training camp. HBO and co-producer NFL Films last year added the in-season show, filming around the four AFC North teams, and an offseason version that premiered — and perhaps ended — with a focus on the Giants.
The in-season show will air its first episode in December.
This article is based in part on wire service reports.